Every South African internet service provider recorded a negative Operational Net Sentiment score for the six months between October 2025 and March 2026, according to the SA Telecoms ISP Customer Experience Index 2026. The report, based on more than 79,000 social media and review mentions across Facebook, X and Hellopeter, found a 67 percentage point gap between the best and worst performing brands, with customer service failures, rather than network faults, driving the bulk of negative sentiment.
Key findings:
RSAWEB was the least negative across the industry, recording an Operational Net Sentiment of -17%, as well as the highest customer service score. Several customers praised staff performance, referencing positive engagements on service channels like WhatsApp and live chat. The brand also recorded the highest volume of purchase-related mentions in the industry, with significant interest expressed around its fibre options.
WebAfrica placed second overall, posting the best network quality and digital experience scores in the industry, with customers praising fast WhatsApp and live chat resolutions. Their birthday campaign generated positive engagement through customers describing what they loved about the internet, which boosted overall Net Sentiment by 17 percentage points. However, sentiment was still net negative. Interestingly, WhatsApp emerged as a big liability for the provider as well, generating 51% of all industry WhatsApp conversations, the majority of which were negative. Complaints included issues linked to automated replies that looped without escalating to a human agent.
Afrihost generated the largest share of network quality complaints in the industry, with customers reporting speeds well below the packages they paid for and a recurring dispute over whether Afrihost or its fibre network partner was responsible for the fault. Mweb had the second lowest score for customer service, with complaints around long wait times, fibre outages without communication, email migration issues, and billing disputes.
Supersonic recorded the lowest Operational Net Sentiment in the industry at -84%, as well as the lowest customer service score, with customer complaints focused on reported outages that ran well beyond the brand's own 72-hour resolution window, technicians who failed to arrive for confirmed bookings, and continued billing after cancellation requests.
"Despite the significant gap between the best and worst performing brands, the industry as a whole struggled to deliver a positive customer experience this period," said Sarah Lamb, Managing Director, DataEQ. "Consumer expectations of what good service looks like are simply not being met, and the providers that can solve this will set themselves apart from the rest of the market."
Customer service was the single most damaging topic, carrying 68% of all conversation and a -75% Net Sentiment score. Three drivers repeated across every brand: turnaround time, where customers waited extended periods for a response to a query; staff competency, where agents were unable to resolve an issue; and generic holding responses, such as "we are escalating," which customers experienced as deflection rather than progress.
Account administration was the most negatively rated topic outright at -94%, driven by billing errors, unauthorised deductions and cancellations that were requested but never completed. Digital channels didn't fare much better; customers complained that Mweb's app often failed to send OTPs, while Supersonic's customer portal repeatedly failed to register completed payments and suspended accounts despite proof of payment. MetroFibre Networx's chatbot was criticised for offering no route to a human agent during a billing system migration that left payment errors unresolved for months.
What is the AI opportunity for South African ISPs?
One of the most commercially relevant findings in the report lies in what providers are doing with the complaints they already receive. Of all industry conversation, 29% was AI-addressable at first contact, covering product and pricing enquiries, compliments, basic connectivity troubleshooting, outage status updates and campaign engagement, the kind of low-complexity queries that require no human judgement to resolve. Despite that opportunity, 71% still required a human agent, dominated by turnaround time complaints, billing disputes, staff competency complaints, prolonged outages and cancellation threats. That underscores that the fix isn't full automation, but a hybrid model that separates the two rather than routing them into the same queue.
Only 49% of high-priority interactions received a public reply, meaning roughly five in ten went unanswered altogether. That gap is not one of capacity. It is a triage failure: providers are potentially spending human attention on queries AI could resolve instantly, while the disputes that actually require judgement wait in the same undifferentiated queue.
"Nearly a third of what customers are telling their ISP doesn't need a person to answer it. The problem is that providers aren't separating that from the complaints that do, so a simple pricing question and a more complex billing dispute end up competing for the same agent's time," said Tebogo Maluleke, Senior Insights Analyst, DataEQ.